Nowadays there are so many ways for dancers to get discovered both on and off of the dance floor. Social media is an amazing tool for dancers. YouTube is an incredibly powerful social media platform for dancers because dancers are able to market themselves, get discovered by choreographers, grow a fan base and showcase their talent all in one place! Not only can you post videos of yourself dancing, but you can even showcase your personality in videos too! We turned to YouTube star and JJGirl Cianna Aguglia and asked her what advice she would give dancers who want to build their following on YouTube. Check out what she told us below:

"I started my YouTube channel in October 2012 (I was 11 years old at the time). I started my channel with my cousin one day because we wanted to post our funny videos to the internet to share with our friends. Honestly, neither of us knew what we were doing at the time. Since then, I've learned a lot about YouTube and social media (even from mistakes). Overtime I developed a passion for uploading entertainment videos and dance videos! Currently, I have an amount of about 140,000 followers on my channel. With the knowledge I have now, I hope to grow my community...and you can too!

Growing an Audience

Growing an audience starts with getting discovered or noticed on YouTube. A couple of ways to get noticed include:

1. Create quality content. Quality over quantity. Most people will click on a well edited and professional looking video over something that was quickly filmed and posted.

2. Use titles and tags wisely. Name your video with something short and easy to search. Tag your video with words relating to your video like "dance, dancer, convention, joandjax, Jo+Jax, etc."

3. Click-bait. This is a tool lots of YouTubers use. I don't usually do this, but bascially click-bait means that you title your video with something that makes people want to click on your video like titling a video, "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED". Lots of YouTubers use capital letters and eye catching titles. Another option is to make the thumbnail of your video eye catching...good visuals are always a good idea.

Ideas for Networking

As a dancer, it's important to network as much as you can. On YouTube you can do this by:

1. Getting in touch with other dancers on YouTube.

2. Staying active on other YouTube channels.

3. Offering to collaborate on a video with another dancer. This usually creates a great new connection!

Learn from Others

Youtube is a great source for learning. Want to know how to do something? Search it in YouTube and for the most part you can find tutorials. You can even learn choreography off of YouTube by finding tutorials that break things down or you can try to learn off of any video on your own.

Expressing Yourself

YouTube is a great way to show off who you are. It's your chance to post and share the things that you love to the world!

Audition Tool

YouTube is a great tool for dancers to audition for anything. Many auditions these days allow you to apply via a video submission! Also, it is very helpful to put together a dance reel and upload it to your channel for choreographers and other dancers to see.

Check out Cianna's YouTube channel here!